Amid speculation about his political future, Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, went on trial on Tuesday with David Mills, the estranged husband of the British Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell.
An article published by a newspaper close to the Italian right quoted Berlusconi as saying he would never again return to government. ”I’ve done my bit. That’s enough for me,” he was said to have told friends. However, the billionaire politician’s spokesperson later quoted him as saying he had ”no scheme for quitting”.
The confusion overshadowed the fact that Berlusconi is again in court for alleged financial irregularities. In the trial that began — and was swiftly adjourned — on Tuesday, he is charged with embezzlement, tax dodging and false accounting.
Mills who, like Berlusconi, was not in court, is accused of helping him to dodge taxes and illegally set aside cash for his family. Another 12 people are on trial over the alleged illegal trading of TV film rights. All deny wrongdoing.
The proceedings were adjourned until Monday because of objections from defence lawyers. In a petition to the court, they argued that the presiding judge, Edoardo d’Avossa, should not hear the case because he had ruled in an earlier trial involving a film production company that forms part of Berlusconi’s business empire. Judge D’Avossa referred the question to an appeal court.
The trial is one of two in which Mills is a defendant alongside Italy’s richest man. In the other, due to begin next year, the British lawyer is accused of taking a £340 000 bribe from Berlusconi.
The political future of the man who is now Italy’s opposition leader is a subject of growing conjecture. If the centre-left government of Romano Prodi were to serve out its five-year term, Berlusconi would be 74 when he next ran for prime minister. His chances of returning to government depend on putting a swift end to the Prodi government, which has a notional majority of one seat in the senate, the upper house of Parliament. However, the government can rely on a majority of Italy’s life senators, while some of Berlusconi’s allies have been reluctant to fight the government in Parliament.
This is particularly the case with the Union of Christian Democrats, whose leader, Pier Ferdinando Casini, is Berlusconi’s most likely successor. Having clung to power for more than six months, the centre-left is set to burnish its credentials in the next few weeks by negotiating the passage of a budget for 2007. – Guardian Unlimited Â